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Page 82
"I don't see why that would have been any easier to poison than
the food," was my objection. "Everyone was looking."
"Very simple. The food was brought in quite late. Besides, it was
dished out by the caterer before the eyes of forty or fifty
people or more and there was no telling which plate would go to
Werner's place. The drinks were poured last of all. I remember
seeing the bubbles rise and wondering whether they would register
at the distance."
Kennedy did not look at me. "Did it ever occur to you," he went
on, casually, "that the glasses were all set out empty at the
various places long before, and that there might easily have been
a few drops of something, if it were colorless, placed in the
bottom of Werner's glass, with scarcely a chance of its being
discovered, especially by a man who had so much on his mind at
the time as Werner had? He must have indicated where he would sit
when he arranged the camera stands and the location of the
tables."
I had not thought of that.
Kennedy frowned. "If only I could have located more of that
broken glass!" As he faced me I could read his disappointment.
"Walter, I've made a most careful search of his chair and the
table and everything about the space where he dropped. The poison
must have been in the wine, but there's not a tiny sliver of that
glass left, nothing but a thousand bits ground into the canvas,
too small to hold even a drop of the liquid. Just think, a dried
stain of the wine, no matter how tiny, might have served me in a
chemical analysis."
Very suddenly there was a low exclamation from Mackay. "Look!
Quick! Some one must have kicked it way over here!"
Fully twenty feet from Werner's place in the glare of the lights
was the hollow stem of a champagne glass, its base intact save
for a narrow segment. In the stem still were a couple of drops of
the wine, as if in a bulb or tube.
"Can it be the director's glass?" Mackay asked, handing it to
Kennedy.
Kennedy slipped it into his pocket, fussing with his handkerchief
so that the precious contents would not drip out. "I think so. I
doubt whether any other glass was broken. Verify it quickly."
The police were entering now with Manton. Following them was the
physician. Mackay and I ascertained readily that no other glass
had been shattered, while Kennedy searched the floor for possible
signs that the stem was part of a glass broken where we had found
it. Unquestionably we had a sample of the actual wine quaffed by
the unfortunate Werner. Elated we strolled to a corner so as to
give the police full charge.
"They'll waste time questioning everyone," Kennedy remarked. "I
have the real evidence." He tapped his pocket.
The few moments that he had had to himself had been ample for him
to obtain such evidence as was destroyed in so many cases by the
time he was called upon the scene.
A point occurred to me. "You don't think the poison was planted
later during the excitement?"
"Hardly! Our criminal is too clever to take a long chance. In
such a case we would know it was some one near Werner and also
there would be too many people watching. Foolhardiness is not
boldness."
I took to observing the methods of the police, which were highly
efficient, but only in the minuteness of the examination of
witnesses and in the care with which they recorded names and
facts and made sure that no one had slipped away to avoid the
notoriety.
The actors and actresses who had stood rather in awe of Kennedy,
both here and in Kennedy's investigation at Tarrytown, developed
nimble tongues in their answers to the city detectives. The
result was a perfect maze of conflicting versions of Werner's cry
and fall. In fact, one scene shifter insisted that Shirley, as
the Black Terror, had reached Werner's side and had struck him
before the cry, while an extra girl with a faint lisp described
with sobering accuracy the flight of a mysterious missile through
the air. I realized then why Kennedy had made no effort to
question them. Under the excitement of the scene, the glamour of
the lights, the sense of illusion, and the stifling heat, it
would have been strange for any of the people to have retained
correct impressions of the event.
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